Federal Election in Australia last Saturday. Since voting is compulsory (sorta), everybody turns out, has a sausage and then goes to the pub. It almost feels like a public holiday. This one was particularly portentous because the conservative government of the past three years has been bloody awful and there was widespread expectation that the progressive Labor Party would walk it in. Instead, an electoral car crash ensued and we woke up on Sunday stuck with the government unchanged. A lot of people are deeply disappointed.
But that's been the story of the Australian government for ... what?... a decade now? The electorate gives New Guy a brief chance, he/she gets things slightly organized, and then the electorate throws them out because they aren't changing things fast enough. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I really didn't want to come home after learning of the result. I had the Guardian's live results on my phone and was fretting much to my friends' annoyance. When the bookies changed their odds to $4+ for a Labor win I'm pretty sure they wanted to kick me out of the house on account of my complaining. What I'm most upset about though is that I couldn't get a democracy sausage in Indonesia.
Try being at a union party. There were grown men in tears. Yeah, the sausage thing has really become a feature in the past decade or so. Overall, voting venues are more and more resembling small fairs, which I'm loving. Clifton Hill Primary School was offering democracy daiquiris during the state election last year. I fully support compulsory voting, but watching pensioners down cocktails at 10 in the morning is its own reward.